Just a quick one! The Grainline Archer shirt is hemmed by turning over two quarter inch folds and stitching. My plaid is a relatively thick fabric and around the button band, this was becoming bulky. So I took some scissors and trimmed away some of that bulk in the shallow section of the first fold. I was careful to stay away from the finished edge of my button band – I didn’t want raw edges poking out.

My sewing teacher, Beth, says that the quality of a finished item lies in the innards – how you’ve graded seams, trimmed, fused – all the stuff you can’t see. Except you can see it, in how well a collar sits or a button band is hemmed.

13 Responses to Getting Rid Of Bulk

I swear, someone needs to make a post (or a book) of all the little things you don’t usually learn when learning to sew, and sometimes have to learn the hard way. It was a long time before I realized you could trim the bulk from folded seams like that, until I saw a picture in a vintage sewing book and thought, “I didn’t know I was allowed to *do* that!”

I’m constantly learning little tips from lovely sewing bloggers like you. Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest difference in a garment. This is certainly a useful trick to my ever-expanding list of sewing skills.

Thank you for posting this! Certainly, more than many procedures in sewing won’t show up on the surface of the garments, but there are definitely consequences that we can feel. I’m usually too shy to tell what I did for my self-made garments in my blog because they can easily become boring explanations while my bad typing. Love how you describe things here!

I agree. These ‘little things’ are markers of quality, but almost shrouded in secrecy. But maybe that’s the point. I get nervous when attempting seam grading. I can’t seem to find a balance between finishing the seams so they don’t ravel and trimming down bulk…

Brilliant tip! I feel like I’ve done this in a super haphazard way before, just hacking into places that I thought were too bulky. I’ll have to remember that there is a ‘way’ to do these things in the future!